56 were in their thirties and forties; perhaps ha1f of them wore veils, but none of their faces were covered. Two of them led young daughters by the hand. Once a cascade of sparks from the fuse box was brought under control, we all settled our- selves on the floor. Then, in a ritual of village life, glasses of water were passed around the room, and I noticed that none of the women allowed the rim of their glass to touch their lips. I discovered later that this, too, had to do with caste, in one of its most inhibiting forms: the pollution associated . h " h bl " Wlt untouc a es. Indira Pancholi was studying me from across the room. "To which feminist groups do you be- long?" she asked. My God, I thought. Can this be hap- pening in G hugra? "None," I said. I was embarrassed. ' d what is your world view?" I could think of no response. For lack of anything better, I said, "I'm a journalist." The women began murmuring among themselves. After some diplomacy, conducted largely by Ravi and Chaggibai, we all relaxed and I was excused for having missed the feminist revolution in the United States, since I had been liv- ing abroad with my husband, also a journalist. The conversation moved quickly: from Prime Minister Atal Behari Vaj- payee's expected gains in the upcoming national elections to his chief opponent, Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born inheritor of the once formidable Nehru-Gandhi dynasty; from Roop Kanwar to Bhanwari Devi, another grassroots activist, who had been gang-raped in a not too distant vil- lage in 1992, after she led a campaign against child marriages. A judge in the state capital of J aipur had acquitted the men allegedly involved, because, in his view, rape is committed only by teen- agers, not by upper-caste, middle-aged village notables, such as those accused. But Bhanwari Devi-who in 1995 at- tended the United Nations women's con- ference, in Beijing-persisted, and her case is now pending before the Jaipur High Court. As the conversation continued, Chag- gibai's own story began to unfold. In 1995, when it was announced that Ra- sulpura would be one of the panchayats Wlth a woman sarpanch, she had been ap- proached to stand, by an assortment of both women and men. She had become well known in the area as a women's ac- tivist, as a school administrator, and as a participant in the Women's Equality pro- gram. She was intelligent, high-spirited, forceful, and well liked. But she was a Dalit, had no money to wage a cam- paign, and had little liking for "the God- father," as she called him, of the pan- chayat. That was Charan Singh, a higher-caste farmer and, by local stan- dards, a man of some wealth, and of po- litical connections. He had led the pan- chayat for as long as anyone could recall. "I was reluctant in the beginning," Chaggibai said. "I felt, as a Bhil woman, that I would be discriminated against, that I would be shown no honor, and that at meetings I would not be permitted to sit on a chair with the other women and men but would be made to sit on the floor. From the very beginning, I knew there would be problems." She smiled. "But I decided to stand anyhow." Politics in Rasulpura, like politics in all villages, especially in the north, is caste politics, and the four villages over which Chaggibai would rule were dominated by the upper Rawat caste, a community of landowners who were traditionally priests, and formed a part of the Rajput warrior élite. They made up sixty per cent of the population, and they overwhelmed the ten per cent of the villagers who were Dalits and tilled their land. There was also a scattering of other castes, both in- termediate and low, and, unusual for Ra- jasthan, a significant number of Muslims. When the villagers finally accepted the fact that Rasulpura had to elect a woman as sarpanch--and a lower-caste woman at that-much of the male Ra- wat élite supported Chaggibai. ' t least she was literate," a Rawat named Mohin- der Singh said to me. ' d she had no husband to interfere." It was clear that Mohinder and his friends had expected Chaggibai to be their marionette. In the end, the Rawat vote split between the supporters and the detractors of Charan Singh, and Chaggibai won the election by two hundred votes. ' t the first village assembly after my election," Chaggibai said, "Charan Singh conducted the meeting, and he refused to allow me to speak. I had canvassed all the women and all the Dalits from my villages to attend, and more than four hundred people came. Charan Singh was SHOWCASE BY FIROOZ ZAHEDI THE SOPRANO F IRST, there was Peach Melba, then came Chicken Tetrazzini. Now, in the grand tradition of nam- ing culinary dishes after operatic super- stars, there is La Diva Renée, a new dessert that the New York chef Daniel Boulud has unveiled in honor of the American soprano Renée Fleming. A mélange of chocolate, hazelnuts, and amaretto cookies in a sauce of clemen- tines, the dish has a chocolate top printed, appropriately; with music from Fleming's next opera at the Met, "Der Rosenkava- lier," in which she sings the Marschallin. (It opens on January 20th.) Like the con- fection, Strauss's heroine is complex and bittersweet, at once regal and vulnerable. These are qualities that Fleming's sump- tuous soprano, which can both bloom and melt in a single breath, possesses, and many operagoers expect her Marschallin to rival that of a onetime teacher of hers, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf "This is a character that can only get richer the more you sing it-it needs a lot of layers," Fleming says. No opera star today is more multilayered than Fleming herself Raised in Rochester, New York, where she grew up with "horses and music-a good combina- tion," she commands a repertoire that encompasses a ha1f-dozen languages and spans three centuries, from Handel's "Alcina" to André Previn's ' Streetcar Named Desire." In February, she gives two other performances in New York- first as the title character in Donizetti's bel-canto shocker "Lucrezia Borgia," and then, with Julie Harris, in an evening of music and words devoted to Emily Dickinson. Meanwhile, she hopes to make a jazz recording with Illinois Jacquet, Charlie Haden, Kenny Barron, Pat Metheny, Wayne Shorter, and Shirley Horn. As anyone who has heard her Ellington repertoire knows, Fleming has a jazz technique to rival the late Sarah Vaughan's-one that was honed in college, where she had her own trio. William Christie, who conducted her in ' cina," was dazzled by her flair with the Baroque style. All that jazz, he said, made her Handel come alive -CHARLES MICHENER